:Archive Of July 2003:
Wednesday, July 30, 2003 - 9:02 PM -
Ah, Lance... He makes me laugh.
- 12:41 AM -
(Ah, sleeplessness.)
So when did we first use plans for regular residential housing? What are the oldest house plans? What are the development themes since then? Cultural, social, and just in reaction to having architects. What do the themes say about private space?
One of the distinctions of boomer culture is their birth coincided with the start of middle class wealth allowing individual rooms for kids. That will have shaped how the generation sees things. Hues of independence and alienation shifted. It became easier to see family as Other. The opportunity to shape an environment to your tastes came earlier. A centricity, which was given a real acceleration by the bulk of your waking hours segregated into your age group in school.
Alongside, BBC recently noted that kids are spending a lot more time online now. Of course they are; they're getting their own computers, just like they've gotten their own phones and cd players and radios and rooms in the past.
Just, thinking about things.
And resisting a further pot of coffee. Went shopping for a new spatula and wandered into the coffeemaker section of the local yesterday. At the end of the row of plastic and retro-schlock they had one of those stainless steel urns that you normally see at conferences. Slightly downsized for residential use but keeping all its industrial glory. Way over the top (20 - 60 cups), but the first thing I've seen that would look right in my kitchen. I'm just not a bodum kinda guy.
Tuesday, July 29, 2003 - 8:22 PM -
Wait, no. Wrox was not technically the uber publisher, Peer was. Glasshaus was either an offshoot of Wrox or a parallel entity under Peer, depending on what piece of paper you look at. But it's all under the bridge now and it's not like the liquidator ever got it all straight either.
- 6:15 PM -
In other news, the CSS book is getting a second edition.
A quick, spotty, biased summary of events would have me writting Cascading Style Sheets: Separating Content from Presentation with Eric Costello, Steven Champeon, and Matt Patterson a little over a year ago. It was the first of what I call Real World CSS books.
The book was well reviewed, got really nice fan mail, and ran directly into the economic downturn that eventually bankrupted the mother publisher, Wrox. So actual sales numbers weren't great. No computer book did great. It was bloody awful for everyone. But the book did sell out quick and had damn near no returns compared to most titles. This tells me the book helped people, and that means a lot because that's why I write.
It's pretty simple: I want people to use the web. I think it's important. CSS is necessary to web publishing, and CSS can be zarking hard to figure out thanks to our browser makers. So I tend to talk about CSS with people more than is sane.
Anyway, Wrox went bust, Glasshaus was no more, and the book waded through the purgatory of liquidation for months. Enter Apress. Wrox traded as Wrox, Tect, Active Path, Curlingstone, Friends Of Ed, and Glasshaus. Our title was one of many picked by Apress. The rumour mill had suggested this was a Good Thing, and I have to say I agree. I'm liking Apress a great deal. They're straight with you. It's a pleasure.
And now the book isn't just being reprinted, it's being rewritten. The trick is to leave unharmed what worked while updating with what's been learned from a really busy year of CSS in the wild. And quickly, because the first edition is out of print. People want the book, can't get it, and some folks had planned on using it as course material. So I've bought eight pounds of coffee and have pretty much wiped everything else off the schedule. I'll let you know the printing date when I know it. I want it back on the shelves too.
--
So, what's writing a book like? Lots of coffee, but you get to write this enormous personal letter to someone. That's the weirdest part of it. It's entirely personal, though I don't know who's reading it any more than I know, well, just about any of you reading Inflight. And it carries with it the almost brutal impossibility of replying when you all start talking back. So essentially I'll be ignoring more email to write something that will generate yet more email. It's a lovely cycle. But I'll blog more. Sleeplessness and caffeine definitely make me blog more.
Saturday, July 5, 2003 - 8:32 PM -
Jackson Pollock: "No Chaos, Damn It". An interview with James Coddington, Chief Conservator.
Tuesday, July 1, 2003 - 4:20 PM -
Ned Kahn, playing with the elements.
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